Next week's SpaceX Starship test still needs FAA authorization SpaceX supremo Elon Musk says the next Starship will launch next week, however, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) hasn't yet given it the green light. Posting on X, Musk claimed the next launch will happen on the week beginning May 19. "Not earlier than May 21" is the date currently bandied about – we asked SpaceX …
Firing everyone at the FAA means there is no-one to close the mishap report or issue a license but the other side of the coin is there will be no-one to issue a fine for launching without a license. The other solution is to use DOGE's backdoor treasury credentials to pay the fine with tax payers' money.
Fire the people who are holding back the approval, and replace them with MAGA bots who will automatically put the government stamp of approval on anything SpaceX submits without even reading it.
For bonus points hold back indefinitely anything SpaceX's competition submit to insure they can never compete with them.
Possibly you are forgetting Boeing's overly-cosy relationships with NASA and the FAA?
Free access to all NASA aeronautical data and who knows how many potential disasters signed off because Boeing's management said everything was fine? The problems didn't start with the 737-Max.
If you think Space-X is dodgy, you haven't looked at the competition...
For any sentient beings who are not fully up to speed the featured picture of That Twat Musk has nothing to do with space exploration and is instead widely interpreted as him copying a fascist salute. I know most of us know this, but no harm in clarifying matters for any visitors from outer space.
Historically, that's a Roman gesture, and was used to show ones resolve : we're ready to die for the honor of victory. It was re-introduced by Mussolini in the 1920-ies with those exact references, references to the Roman honorable spirit. It was then found to be cool by the Nazis who decided to use it also. It's actually used by many organizations where people have to swear on their honor. You might notice that Hitler himself used a shortened version of that salute where he shortly raised his fore-arm only
Because it is. It's historical evolution is irrelevant.
I suppose you think a 2 finger salute is literally just that, and a KKK member in full gear is just some dude in a pointy hat?
Anyway, next time you get angry seeing someone showing the Soviet communist flag, just chill out - it's just someone who likes old farming equipment.
A two finger salute, before just a raised middle finger became the more common gesture, was a raised middle and fore-finger. It (apparently) dates back to when wars were common between England and France. The English archers were greatly feared by the French, who cut those two fingers off any captured bowman to render them harmless. Hence the meaning of the gesture was that the gesturer could still shoot you, and would be quite happy to do so.
Many of us on the Right Side of the Pond probably know more about US History than say 75% of Americans. I used to educate my US workmates on pre-revolution USA. They were really taught very little other than the Pilgrim Fathers. I can trace my family back to one that was split in two. One part went with them ant the other half stayed behind just in case they perished at sea.
"You might notice that Hitler himself used a shortened version of that salute where he shortly raised his fore-arm only"
I guess when you're the boss and have a habit of offing dissenters, nobody's really going to complain if you're only doing a half hearted attempt at the salute.
"Historically, that's a Roman gesture"
Absolutely not!
The first instance of it appearing is from a painting in the 1600s and it's a classic example of retconning
The salute itself (along with the flag worship, Eugenics, manifest destiny, untermensch, etc) was lifted from the USA (Bellamy Salute)
Don't take my word for it, it's all in Mein Kampf.
The Austrian painter deeply admired the Confederacy (which was the first fascist state, long before Mussolini coined the term) and this is why _millions_ of Americans eagerly adopted naziism in the 1930s
They have a serious clear zone, and an extended clear zone which is triggered in the event of a RUD... a transponder quite likely won't help with all the other bits of the vehicle coming down on top of you if you ignore that clear zone (or live there)
It seems like when they announce a relatively firm date for a test flight when there's a pending investigation into a previous flight, it's because the FAA has already given them the unofficial nod, so I'd suspect if there's a delay, it's not going to be because of FAA clearance. They really need this test to go right, because it's been really unusual for SpaceX going backward with the Ship on the last flight. And even the boosters, I mean, there were supposed to be fixes to address the boost-back relight issue on the last flight, but we had two engines fail to relight instead of one on the previous flight, so even with the successful tower catch, that kind of went backwards a bit too. Anyway, excitement guaranteed, I hope it happens at a time when I can watch the stream.
"there is some demonstrable benefit to the redundancy of 3+10 engines for that burn..."
If 2 of the 3 center engines don't work, the remaining engine may not have enough control authority to steer the rocket since those are the only ones that gimbal. If two outer engines next to each other and one center engine go out, that could be too asymmetric to control. I'm sure there are other various combinations that will lead to bad things. It should be that there's better reliability so we'd only see one engine not lighting every 10 flights or more.
Undoubtedly fewer engine out events would be better.
At the moment they light 3+10, then drop 10 (and can drop those slightly later if they didn't all light), then drop one more (assuming all the central ones lit).
It could hover on one centre engine (it would just need to throttle up more, dry mass is almost certainly sub 200t, thrust available is over 230t) - and that would allow landing... except for the complete lack of roll control at low speeds (at high speeds the grid fins can provide control).
We've had multiple adjacent engines go out without loss of control, they have massive gimbaling range for those centre engines, as well as the ability to throttle down the opposite engines (limits to how for they can do that on landing for obvious reasons)
"It seems like when they announce a relatively firm date for a test flight when there's a pending investigation into a previous flight, it's because the FAA has already given them the unofficial nod"
I think Elon does this to push the FAA. They've done it several times before going as far as filling the propellant tanks with an expectation that the FAA would give them a thumbs up and they could launch minutes later. Turns out the approval didn't happen. Elon also sets dates for lots of other things with what appears to be a prod to get engineering teams to finish something in record time which can be why those dates go whizzing by since Elon doesn't know much about engineering.
SpaceX does need to get their testing done and if they plan to use the v3 Raptor engine for the HLS, that needs to be a bigger priority. They were supposed to land an unmanned prototype rocket on the moon in Jan 2024 so they around 42 months behind schedule and slipping fast. There's still lots of questions to be answered.
"Followed swiftly by "isn't this a solved problem?" Like, back in the 1960s."
Mostly it is, but the physics surrounding why it happens are inherent in the system. Destin at "Smarter Every Day" on YouTube had a pad side chat with Tory Bruno of ULA where this was discussed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh7Xf3Ox7K8
As a side note, some of my engineering was on the top of that rocket. Sadly, it didn't make it to the moon. Totally not my fault.
Leaving Musk out of the equation, I hope Space-X do succeed with Starship, the advancement in aerospace they are creating is very impressive. It wasn't long ago the thought of a reusable rocket was considered laughable and here we are with falcon 9's routinely returning and being reused. And now everyone else is trying to catch up and with luck we will have a competitive reusable rocket launch infrastructure. The number of scientific launches in the last decade is staggering. The future decade will be an order of magnitude greater.
I've mentioned it before but the power behind the throne, Gwen Shockwell, is the person I'd be focused on if I was a competitor to Space-X. She's the driving force.
If Starship succeeds putting a 100-150 tons in orbit routinely at a fraction of the current costs. it opens many possibilities beyond the headline Mars shot. Orbital habitats become feasible with pharma and materials science improvement we can only dream of once you start having fabrication and manufacturing in micro G.
I am old enough to have skipped school to watch the first shuttle launch with all that it promised and it still excites me to watch a starship launch. Not because of or despite Elon Musk, but just for the enjoyment of watching something that massive brute force it's way into the blue and then return and be caught by mechanical chopsticks. If someone had said that to me 20 years ago I'd have thought they were smoking something or daydreaming after reading some interesting science fiction book.
> . It wasn't long ago the thought of a reusable rocket was considered laughable
When was that?
They were known to be tricky - Clipper was tried, for example, but wasn't expected to go into space, it was testing out the practical basics of control systems.
But laughable? Nah.
Well, by flerfs, perhaps.
"Orbital habitats become feasible"
Imagine things like Webb telescope without the orgami, or Hubble scaled up to 9 metre mirror (they're quite different designs and intentions)
Coupled with a fleet of ion tugs (there are 3 in service already), the possibilities are fascinating (tugs allow deorbiting GEO birds and/or removing dead ones from the clarke belt - which is currently causing in-service units to have to manouver out of the way thanks to orbital precession)
"It wasn't long ago the thought of a reusable rocket was considered laughable"
Nope. It was not considered economical. SpaceX can make the numbers work as they are launching gazillions of Starlink metal rain devices with a fast cadence. The technical aspects were worked out in the 1960's.
Have a look at this before Elon had even considered reuse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2Yt5L5TlGM
Xombie, a lander test platform, is still around with over 200 flights on the counter and owned by Astrobotic who bought the assets of Masten Space Systems.
"I am old enough to have skipped school to watch the first shuttle launch with all that it promised and it still excites me to watch a starship launch. "
I'm old enough that I worked for the sound company that provided the PA system at Edwards Air Force base for the first landing. All of the on-site audio for the newsies came through a distribution system I designed and built (at the last minute, of course). Lucky that Jensen Transformers had just enough product on the shelf to git er done.
Not sure which news you're reading, but if that's failure, give me more of it.
Some Numbers:
$13.1 Billion in Revenue (2024): SpaceX's revenue increased to $13.1 billion in 2024, with $8.2 billion from Starlink and $4.2 billion from launch services.
https://payloadspace.com/estimating-spacexs-2024-revenue/
4.6 Million Starlink Subscribers: Starlink's customer base doubled in 2024, reaching 4.6 million subscribers by year's end.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2025/02/10/its-official-starlink-is-spacexs-biggest-money-mak/
1,500 Metric Tonnes to Orbit: SpaceX launched approximately 1,500 metric tonnes to orbit in 2024—over 20 times more than the next closest competitor.
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=62151.0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches
134 Falcon Launches: In 2024, SpaceX conducted 134 Falcon family launches, breaking its previous record and accounting for a significant portion of global orbital launches.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches
SpaceX's achievements in 2024 show a company that's not only pushing the boundaries of space exploration but also delivering results. If you are just watching Starship then you're missing 90% of what the company does. It's an R&D exercise for them albeit with huge payoffs if they succeed. It just happens to be very public and splashy :)
"1,500 Metric Tonnes to Orbit: SpaceX launched approximately 1,500 metric tonnes to orbit in 2024—over 20 times more than the next closest competitor."
... and how much of that was Starlink? Are you also counting Starship?
The launch market has not grown that much over the last couple of decades.
Funny how you have so much accounting from a private company that doesn't publish those figures. Ahhh, estimated numbers from the outside. Other outsiders have put the Starlink bottom line firmly in the red and only as good as it is by not assigning a retail price to the launches.
I posted my source for the tonnage but I will post it again https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=62151.0
You're correct that they are estimates but if you have better, I am all ears. Genuinely. This stuff interests me as an armchair enthusiast.
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